Clarissa Delacroix

Clarissa Delacroix (1539-1557) was the illegitimate daughter of Queen Catherine de Medici and the French noble Richard Delacroix.

Biography
Clarissa Delacroix was born in 1539, the illegitimate daughter of Queen Catherine de Medici of France and King Henry II of France's boyhood friend Richard Delacroix. She shared the same birthmark as her father, so Catherine had Nostradamus' father, a physician, attempt to remove the birthmark from Clarissa. The surgery removed part of the birthmark, but left Clarissa greatly disfigured due to the use of potions. She was left in the care of Nostradamus, who secretly brought her to the French court and allowed for her to live in the secret passageways of the castle, out of the sight of her family, who believed that she had died. She was left with a desire for revenge against her mother, saving Mary, Queen of Scots from Colin MacPhail when Catherine sent Colin to rape her in 1557; she then helped Colin in attempting to escape from prison by marking another prisoner for death in his stead. She later kidnapped her half-brothers, Princes Charles and Henry, and attempted to drown them to punish her mother for abandoning her, but Mary hit Clarissa in the head with a rock, believing her to be dead. She was buried, but she went on to escape from her gravesite. She was later captured after villagers accused her of stealing, and she was about to be hanged when King Henry's son Sebastian de Poitiers interceded and brought her to court to face trial. Sebastian later had Clarissa poisoned to fulfill Nostradamus' prophecy that Mary's arrival at the French court would cause Catherine's firstborn's death; Clarissa was technically Catherine's first child, and her death supposedly saved the sickly Prince Francis, the oldest legitimate child, from his own death.